Shipwreck Narratives: Out of our Depth (Maritime Literature and Culture)

Shipwreck Narratives: Out of Our Depth studies both the representation of shipwreck and the ways in which shipwrecks are used in creative, philosophical, and political works. The first part of the book examines historical shipwreck narratives published over a period of two centuries and their legacies. Michael Titlestad points to a range of narrative conventions, literary tropes and questions concerning representation and its limits in narratives about these historic shipwrecks. The second part engages novels, poems, films, artwork, and musical composition that grapple with shipwreck. Collectively the chapters suggest the spectacular productivity of shipwreck narrative; the multiple ways in which its concerns and logic have inspired anxious creativity in the last century. Titlestad recognizes in weaving in his personal experience that shipwreck--the destruction of form and the advent of disorder--could be seen not only as a corollary for his own neurological disorder, but also an abiding principle in tropology. This book describes how shipwreck has figured in texts (from historical narratives to fiction, film and music) as an analogue for emotional, psychological, and physical fragmentation. Michael Titlestad is Personal Professor in the Department of English, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He has published widely in the fields of South African literature, apocalypticism, whiteness and jazz. He is the author of Making the Changes: Jazz in South African Literature and Reportage and is the co-editor (with David Watson) of The Ongoing End: The Limits of Apocalyptic Narrative. He is also the editor of English Studies in Africa, the most widely read literary studies journal in South Africa. Acknowledgements Contents About the Author List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Work Cited Part I: Historical Narratives Chapter 2: An Incidental Dystopia: The Wreck of the Batavia (1629) Works Cited Chapter 3: Captain of a Shipwreck: The Wreck of the Wager (1741) Works Cited Chapter 4: The Limits of the Law: The Wreck of the Grosvenor (1791) Works Cited Chapter 5: Remembering William Mackay: The Wreck of the Juno (1795) Works Cited Chapter 6: The Cannibals and the Butterfly: The Wreck of the Medusa (1816) Works Cited Chapter 7: King Baba’s Largesse: The Wreck of the Winterton (1792) Works Cited Part II: Representations Chapter 8: James F. Cobb and Daphne du Maurier in Cornwall Works Cited Chapter 9: Stephen Crane and James Hanley’s Open Boats Works Cited Chapter 10: Proximity in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat Works cited Chapter 11: John Steinbeck’s ‘Lifeboat’: An Unfinished Journey Works Cited Chapter 12: Making Room: The Lifeboat, an Invidious Motif Works Cited Chapter 13: The Inner Wreck in Sheila Fugard’s The Castaways Coda Works Cited Chapter 14: Soundings: Gavin Bryars and Brian Eno’s Titanics Works Cited Chapter 15: Politics in Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s The Sinking of the Titanic Works Cited Chapter 16: ‘The Endlessly Sinking Ship’: Günter Grass’s Crabwalk Works Cited Chapter 17: Regarding Lampedusa Works Cited Chapter 18: Jacki McInnes’s Urban Wreck Works Cited Chapter 19: Constructive Wrecks Works Cited Chapter 20: Postscript: Thinking from the Sea Works Cited Index